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Dr. Cheryl Zhenyu Qian is an Associate Professor of Interaction Design in Industrial Design at Purdue University. She received a B.Arch. from Southeast University in China, M.A.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees of Interactive Arts and Technology from Simon Fraser University in Canada. Being a boundary crosser, Dr. Qian is interested in studying and developing cognitive interactive systems to enrich the knowledge, employing interdisciplinary research methodologies to improve the design quality, and adopting innovative technologies to better accommodate user experience. Her current research is focused on 1) the harmonious integration of physical and virtual interactions in the user experience design, 2) adopting interaction design theories, tools, and evaluation methods to review, compare, guide, and enhance product design outcomes, and 3) employing innovative design thinking into the domain of visual analytics.

Dr. Qian’s graduate-study-research developed her professional core from a designer (architect) to a design researcher. Her career at Purdue University focused her to new research directions in the industrial design context. She has opportunities to collaborate with not only researchers, designers, and engineers, but also industrial manufacturers, network security analysts, business managers, and more importantly real product users. She noticed and understood the urgent needs of interaction design to shape user experience. Her interpretation and exploration of interaction design have gone from the cyberspace, immersed into everyday products, and covered across interdisciplinary domains such as user experience analysis, service design, human-computer interaction, information design, visual analytics, and computer-aided design.

As an academic researcher, apart from winning seven IEEE VAST challenge system design awards (2010~2014), the 1st demo contest prize of I2LOR'07 and the 2nd demo contest prize of I2LOR'05, Cheryl has built up a publication list ranging from journals, conference proceedings, poster presentations, and book translations in the interdisciplinary domains of Interaction Design, Digital Learning, Computer-aided Design, Human-computer Interaction and Engineering Education. Her PhD dissertation won the Dean of Graduate Studies Convocation Medal from Simon Fraser University in 2010.

Dr. Qian developed the new Purdue University Interaction Design MFA program and its four core courses based on the perspectives of interdisciplinary and innovation. She led undergraduate and graduate students to participate in collaborations around the campus and across other universities in community service, special education, and game design.